Kat Day (she/her)

@chronicleflask@mstdn.social
495 Followers
218 Following
225 Posts
Science & Fiction editor/writer. Chemistry PhD. Writer The Crash Course Organic Chemistry. Assistant Editor PseudoPod. ChronicleFlask & FictionPhial blogs
Fictionhttps://thefictionphial.wordpress.com/pubs-and-favs
Sciencehttps://chronicleflask.com
PseudoPodhttps://pseudopod.org/people/kat-day
TIL about Vantablack – the "world's darkest material”. It absorbs up to 99.965% of visible light that strikes it, measured perpendicular to the material. This is a wrinkled piece of aluminium foil which has been painted with it – the centre is as wrinkled as the foil around it.

Meet the manchineel tree! It’s incredibly toxic: just standing underneath it can cause horrible blisters. Its sap contains phorbal (which is water soluble, making this a bad place to stand in a rainstorm) which causes a strong inflammatory response and promotes tumour formation.

The manchineel tree is native to southern North America to northern South America.

Its fruit look like small apples, hence one Spanish name is manzanilla de la muerte, "little apple of death” 💀

Do not eat.

Since it’s #PeriodicTableDay a reminder that when the official discovery of element 117 was announced I, for laughs, proposed it be named octarine (Oc) in honour of Sir Terry Pratchett (who had died a few months before).

The petition went viral and got over 51k signatures.

Sadly, IUPAC weren’t having it and 117 was eventually named tennessine (Ts), after Tennessee where the Oak Ridge National Laboratory is based.

Which. Fine.

It clearly wasn’t *precisely* a million-to-one chance.

(1/2)

Tonight’s (6th Feb) #SnowMoon. Isn’t it beautiful?
It's #RhubarbPieDay! Most people know that while rhubarb stalks are edible, the leaves aren't. They contain about 0.5% oxalic acid—unlikely to be lethal, but enough to cause a stomach upset. Most of the acidity in the stalks is due to malic acid. More about the leaves here...
https://chronicleflask.com/2013/05/08/rhubarb-rhubarb-rhubarb/
(this blog post is from 2013 – ten years ago! – please forgive the double spaces after my full stops, I know better now...)
Rhubarb rhubarb rhubarb

the chronicle flask
I do like a frosty morning!
January skies.
Some frosty pics from this morning
A frosty morning!
It’s finally starting to feel properly wintery here!